the red pill

Thursday, November 24, 2016

Saraswati,
the goddess of speech, is the personification of Sanskrit. She is also
an ancient river that supported the Indian civilization for thousands of years.
(Art by Abhishek Singh)

Crisis in our understanding of
computation:

Computers are now in everybody's pockets,
but most people are unaware of what they are doing. Soon, computers will be
integrated into people's clothes and into their own bodies. But for most
people, they remain a black box. The renowned journalist Kevin Kelly once
stated on Twitter,

Imagining a computer as an egg is a
horrible analogy, although it sounds profound on first glance. Mr. Kelly is a smart
writer with informed opinions. So this makes him an especially good candidate
to debunk - what we may call a support
vector in machine learning parlance. The fact is people are already
panicking about how opaque computers have become. Social media like Facebook
and Twitter have precipitated awful political decisions, with nobody having a
clue about how to find the truth amidst fake news, innuendo and subtle
manipulative messaging. I have previously argued how the web is resembling an
octopus-like monster that enslaves the user, instead of being a personalized
tool like a bicycle. With growing power of artificial intelligence (AI), this opaqueness of computation
is reaching scarier proportions. Even for the technically literate people, the
analysis of algorithms is getting more and more complex, especially with data-driven
machine learning. How to prove the convergence and optimality of an algorithm
that uses a ton of data and encodes it in a multi-layered neural network? When
these neural networks are used for financial trading, make insurance policies
or evaluate employees, they exhibit complex biases that are much harder to
debug than traditional computer programs. But the fundamental problem remains not
AI, but our own ignorance. How can we as a society arrive at political
decisions about the use of AI, when most people are completely clueless about
computers?

Along with this crisis lies a huge
opportunity. Computer algorithms are getting increasingly proficient in understanding
human languages and interpreting visual images like humans do. With these
advances, the borders between programming languages and human languages are
getting blurred. New paradigms of computer programming are emerging that
imagine computers as partners that speak with humans, and solve problems through mutual dialogue. However, we as a society still do not see
computer programs as natural language dialogue and literature – capable of literary beauty and emotive
content. Equivalently, we do not see literature as a computational object with
hyperlinks between various literary references (apart from rare visionaries
like Ted Nelson who see it thus). We do not use computer programs to speak to each other or to
investigate our internal psyches. To the extent that we use them, we do it
unconsciously. A powerful demonstration of this is the failure of semantic web,
which was supposed to provide a rich context specific layer of information on
the web that is pertinent to the user. Instead of this, we got a million bots
and cookies that spy on the user without his knowledge. Now with the internet
of things, this networked espionage on users has penetrated household objects.
The principal cause of this dystopia is the lack of human communication between
users and computers, capable of encoding computational procedures.

Along with the specter of ignorance about AI lies the risk of technological unemployment. The skills of most people are becoming obsolete in an economy driven by AI bots. This is particularly worrisome for India, which houses the largest pool of working human population in the world. So the disenfranchising of users with respect to machines has an economic exploitation angle to it, that disproportionately affects India and other poor countries. But this might be a situation where Indian cultural experience may be particularly well-suited to build a humanistic vision about AI.

Long before AI and computers, we have a historical example where computational thinking has profoundly shaped
literature and arts: the Sanskrit language. In the following, I will
give different types of motivation why people working in computers and AI need to
study Sanskrit: obtaining an alternate perspective, the technical superiority
of Sanskrit grammar, the immense heritage of scientific works in Sanskrit, and
the virtues of Sanskrit culture towards promoting biodiversity.

Alternative imagination through
linguistic diversity:

A couple of friends asked me, what would
be an Indian perspective about AI? In fact, this is a deep question that needs a lifetime of an answer. When we think with logic, we are inherently
bound to the very language in which those logical categories are formulated. So
each language offers us a unique perspective about the world. As an Indian
who speaks English, French and German, I know this personally. My entire
personality changes in response to the language I am speaking. Even within
India, there are thousands of languages. For example, in my mother tongue
Telugu, there are two words to denote the inclusive and exclusive
"we". This facility doesn't exist in English or in Hindi, so it always remains
ambiguous when I say in a group of people "You can
come for dinner.We will make food." The noted poet Shatavadhani Ganesh once remarked how in
Indian languages we never say "I don't feel good", but rather
"My body doesn't feel good". These subtle differences in
language make a huge impact in one's consciousness in how one's mind reasons
about a given situation. Apart from the words, there is the poetic aspect to language in how the very sounds are pronounced. So the same concept might sound differently to the consciousness when expressed in a different language. So it is useful to have multiple linguistic and
cultural perspectives about the problem of AI.

It is important to have an immersive
cultural experience to trigger the mind to think in new categories. Merely
using a few words in a new language will not impact one’s consciousness and yank it
out of existing categories. For this reason, Confucians ordered their daily
lives in a precise framework of rituals and ethical values. As Sinologist Edward
Slingerlandputs it, ritual is a method
for hard-wiring the cold calculating processes of the logical brain (Broca’s area, Anterior Cingulate Cortex
and so on) into the hot thinking of the subconscious brain (circuits in the
brain stem). Until one achieves this hot thinking, one’s conscious experience
will not change. This awareness has long been part of Indian culture, which
introduced many festivals, rituals, mantric chanting and immersive networked relationships
between daily activities. In terms of language learning, such immersive
experience is far better in picking up a new language than studying through grammar and
dictionaries. This is validated by automatic machine translation systems where
even computers learn better when taught through examples. However, human
translators fare still better, because they can make conscious associations between words and contexts. It is important that we as a species preserve
this biodiversity in human consciousness. By this, I mean we need to preserve not only the
languages, but also the daily living experiences of a large group of people.
Bernie Krause wrote about how animal vocalizations are dramatically altered when
the biophonies of their ecosystems are destroyed by motor vehicles and industrial sounds. Similarly, human
vocalizations and conscious experience are destroyed when their supporting cultural
ecosystems are damaged. This is particularly a problem for poor countries
and vulnerable tribal communities.The destruction of their languages has a dramatic impact on the physical and mental health of people. When rituals and songs from childhood are preserved, they help maintain the health and cognitive capacity well into old-age.

The scientific enterprise
is a global effort, with people from many countries
collaborating with each other. However, there is a dominant narrative and it is
written in the language of English. The western universities, especially those
based in USA and UK, set the global narrative and the scientific categories in which we
think. This is worrisome because English is a notoriously fickle language
with no precise grammar. George Orwell described how the English language can
be distorted to mean arbitrary things. We have seen this in the political
sphere when words such as "insurgent",
"surge" and now "alt-right" are introduced.
But a similar corruption happens in the scientific sphere, based on how the
academic establishment encourages certain scientific terms to become popular. The worst
form of bondage is when we are completely unaware of how we are bounded by our own thought processes. This
makes slavery through controlling the language one of the subtlest and wickedest
forms of slavery. In this regard, we have to see how colonial powers
systematically abducted native American and Australian children from their
parents and enrolled them in boarding schools, where they were punished every
time they spoke in their mother tongues. Such boarding schools existed in India
where the elite bureaucrats were trained during the British Raj. But the greater problem today is how economic opportunity is denied to Indians who
don’t speak English. In this way, Indians are being alienated from their own
mother tongues and forced to think in English – an imported language, where
they are not recognized as an authority. For example, despite being fluent
speakers, Indians are not allowed to teach English in many countries. This is a subtle form of economic bondage where Indians remain
consumers of English products, but do not have any brand recognition when they
are the producers. If the English language is imagined as a computer, Indians do not have the root privilege and can only use a limited set of commands.

In computer science, such chains of
slavery are exposed in the programming environments we use, and how much
control a programming language gives to the user. This is allegorically
narrated in the classic movie Tron, where the wicked operating system tries to
curb the freedom of the user. In today's world, we can replace this operating
system with Facebook, or NSA, or the manufacturers of mobile devices. Our online
and offline lives depend on these services, but how much awareness do we have
of our personal data that we leave behind ? Without awareness, there is no
freedom.Most people do not have a conscious awareness of their data because the computing environments do not interact with them in a language and graphics that they can relate to, although it is now possible to build such interfaces.

Degree of transparency in language:

There is a remarkable difference between
different human languages on how opaque they can be rendered to the speakers
(or equivalently, how they can be manipulated by a position of authority). Borrowing the analogy from Kevin Kelly,
the English language is like a giant egg. This problem is apparent in the very
words "artificial intelligence". What exactly do we mean by
"intelligence"? What do we mean by "artificial"? Do we
expect an AI to be masculine or feminine? Do we expect this to be compassionate
or selfish? Do we treat it as a person, capable of suffering? More importantly,
does humanity have a creative agency with AI? Does the principle of strict causality in physics even permit humans to have a creative agency? Howe we answer these questions is simply a matter
of convention and social custom - these are
decided by positions of authority. For example, the Oxford dictionary gives
guidelines on how to interpret the words. Academic authority is consulted for
the interpretation of scientific terms. But this is not the case in
Sanskrit - which has many distinct words for intelligence: buddhi, manas, citta, jnana, vijnana, prajna, ahamkara and so on. Which of these words should we use to translate artificial intelligence ? The meaning of these Sanskrit words is not given by convention or authority, but is clear from their very etymology. In this blog and later, I will argue that we should not merely translate from English categories, but build a complete scientific framework from the grounds-up using Sanskrit terminology.

Sanskrit is unique, because unlike any other human language, there is
no dictionary needed for Sanskrit. Instead, it possesses a generative grammar of computational rules. The number of Sanskrit words is potentially infinite. Even if we restrict to words less than 5 syllables in length, there are more than hundreds of thousands of words. Each word in Sanskrit is akin to
a self-explanatory computer program that can be parsed into individual
syllables (phonemes) by which its meaning can be derived. Thus, an infinite number of new words can be generated whose meaning
will be unambiguous to a Sanskrit speaker. The magic of Sanskrit grammar
is that you can have multiple ways of breaking a word and putting it together
again, that leads to multiple angles of meaning, all of which converge on the
denoted object. Certain words have even ten or more derivations to
distinct contextual associations, that reflect the meaning like how the
facets of a diamond reflect light in many directions within. This is unparalleled by any other language. The reason for this are two computational processes called Sandhi and Samasa that specify what to do when words are put together.

I will illustrate this with a sentence containing just two words, from a mathematical text in Sanskrit called Yuktibhasa.

JyaSamvargamCapaDwayaYogaViyogArthaJyaVargAntaram.

This translates into the following equation:

sin(a)sin(b) = sin^2((a+b)/2)-sin^2((a-b)/2)

How is this possible? The first word is the expression on the left. The second word is the expression on the right. The equals-to sign is omitted, because it is implicit from an aspect of Sanskrit grammar known as Vibhakti. The left expression is translatable into English as Sine-Product. The right expression can be translated into a Lisp like syntax as follows.

Difference(Squares(Halves(Sum&Difference(Pair(Arcs)))))

The word order in Sanskrit is reversed, but otherwise this is what it says. The key thing to note is that the symbols () and & are omitted in Sanskrit. The parse-tree of how the parantheses close with each other is implicitly determined by the rules of Sandhi and Samasa. These compuatational rules enable on-the-fly generation of complex words that precisely describe any given semantic context. Such words are used not only for mathematical formulae but in poetry and regular parlance. For example, the hero Arjuna is addressed in the epic Mahabharata as Savyasachi (the one who can shoot arrows from both hands), Pandava, Partha etc, depending on the context in which the other person is referring to him. For any given context, the names themselves are not important for understanding people or concepts, but rather the relationships between them. We can see this influence in all Indian languages, where family relatives are addressed with words that denotes the precise kinship in the family tree. But unlike other languages where the meaning of words can change over time, the etymology of Sanskrit words retain their purity.

Key to understanding this is to recognize
the nature of "pollution" in a language that can obscure meaning. Indian
philosophers understood the universe in terms of five subtle elements, named as
- space, fire, air, water and earth. These elements have a distinct philosophical
meaning (which should not be confused with the meaning of the words in
English). In this order, these elements are defined as those cumulatively
accessible to the senses of sound, sight, touch, taste and smell. Thus, the
most gross element is named "earth" which is accessible to all the
five senses, where as the most subtle element is named "space" which
is accessible merely to the sense of sound. The grosser elements are considered
prone to pollution, where as the most subtle element "space" and its
associated property of "sound" is free from it. Any natural language
is considered as "Prakrit" (literally meaning "natural")
which has all the five constituent elements. A "prakrit" can be
polluted, just as earth, water and air could be polluted. When a language
(Prakrit) becomes polluted, it is termed Vikrit. When it is mixed with
polluting materials, it becomes "Bhramsa".
When the nature of the polluting materials overtake the very nature of
language, it becomes "Apabhramsa".
The greater the amount of pollution in a language, the greater the harm created
to the ecology of concepts defined in that language, in how they relate to the perceiving mind.

Amongst modern languages, English is an Apabhramsa and its grammar is that of
an Apabhramsa - needing an infinite number of exceptions. But at its core, English
is a "prakrit" whose exact nature is often not known to its speakers.
Other languages are also Prakrits - each with their own charm and sweetness, when
realized in their unpolluted forms. However, at the core of any Prakrit is the
fundamental vibration of "sound", which is free from any type of
pollution. Indian philosophers argue that there is a language that is present
only in the most subtle aspect of "sound" - Sanskrit. Thus,
Sanskrit is not an ordinary language (Prakrit). It is considered beyond any
type of pollution. The closest analogy in the western tradition is the language
of pure mathematics. However, there is a significant
difference: Sanskrit is a spoken language. It cannot be represented in symbolic
form - with whichever alphabet - without losing its purity. There are two other
differences. Unlike mathematical/programming languages, Sanskrit can be used
for poetry and aesthetics as well as for science. Unlike
mathematical/programming languages, Sanskrit is based on a continuous living
tradition and is indeed the direct ancestor for modern mathematical/programming
languages, which only preserved parts of its aspects.

To understand what is
missing, I will give a few examples. The nature of a computer program in the UNIX
programming environment is not evident from the name of its command, unlike the
vocabulary of Sanskrit. One has to look up the man page of the command to
understand what the program does. One can also look in the source-code of the
program, but that can be obscure in itself. Typically, this source-code or its associated data
structures are not even available for other computing applications, such as
popular web-services like Google and Facebook. Another comparison is with the
Lisp programming language, whose compiler is a short program written in Lisp
itself. This makes Lisp a very flexible language where new programming syntax
can be invented on the fly. Such is also the case for Sanskrit language, which
has a very compact grammar given by Panini. However, a blind person cannot
comprehend the syntax of the Lisp language, but can follow the diction in
Sanskrit. This is also the case for mathematical equations and formulae, which
were traditionally represented as poems that can be sung in Sanskrit. It is
also important to note that mathematical notation has certain limits. Many applications enabled by modern computing hardware like deep neural
networks, differentiation of discontinuous functions etc. cannot be
adequately analyzed by the current mathematical notation. This may be a fundamental limitation.

There are certain key differences
between modern axiomatic mathematics and traditional Indian Ganita expressed in
Sanskrit. From a very early point on, Sanskrit tradition was conscious of the
limitations of 2-sided logic (I explained this in a different blog), so did not accept the notion of proofs by contradiction and used them only sparingly. Instead, the onus is placed on experimental
observation, like in physics. Further, the notion of the conscious observer is very
carefully defined, with respect to different layers of consciousness. Sanskrit language can be seen as a method of encoding low entropy
through its technical terms and grammar. By repeated use, they refine one’s
consciousness and make one see certain things that are not seen on first
glance. As Sanskrit is a spoken language, these words can be chanted or heard,
with eyes closed in meditation. This can be a source ofmathematical inspiration.

The heritage of scientific works in
Sanskrit:

The computer scientist Alan Kay
once argued that humans are very myopic in how we think about the future - our
eyes are dazzled by the present and we can imagine the future only in terms of
finite modifications of the present situation. However, our culture and history
are vast, with many ideas forgotten by the wayside before they reach their
maturity. In computer science, we can see this every passing year, as brilliant
ideas lay forgotten for several years, until new powerful computers or better
user-interfaces suddenly make them popular again.

But the true history of computation (and science
in general) is not known to most people. Their origins lie in the ancient
history of India, which for the most part, has only been given brief glimpses
in Europe. The central figure of this story is the Sanskrit grammarian Panini,
who was born before the Buddha, and wrote the first algebraic system, the first
formal system, and indeed, the very first computational system. Panini stands
midway between us today and the earliest Sanskrit sages 5000 years ago. With
Paninian grammar and associated shastras
(scientific texts), India had a headway of about 2000 years before
Europe (and most of the other countries) when it comes to computational
thinking. This computational mindset has penetrated into million art-forms,
cultural and religious practices and of course, the scientific investigation in
India. For example, the sutra tradition of Panini is the direct ancestor of the modern mathematical notation that we use in science today. The Vayu Purana of 500 BC gives an explicit definition of a Sutra to have the following characteristics:

Alpaksharam: with the fewest letters possible

Asandigdham: unambiguous

Saaravat: meaningful & have the capacity to generate new sutras

Viswatomukham: applicable to the external world

Astobham: containing no pauses and gaps

Anavadhyam: irrefutable from perception and other means of knowledge (pramanas)

The Paninian rules of grammar have developed in this Sutra tradition and took them to the highest pinnacle. If you look for this in wikipedia, or in textbooks, or in trendy TED
talks, you will not find it. The reason is simple: India was colonized and its
history was suppressed. For the most part, historians of science ignore the
contributions from the whole world beyond Europe. They perpetuate colonial stereotypes about the superiority of
Europeans (Greeks) which sound comical and funny in this 21st
century. The fact is Europe was a scientific backwaters right up to the dawn of
the industrial revolution. Greeks and Romans had very few tangible achievements in science. They were quite superstitious and had appalling arithmetic, inaccurate time-keeping
by calendars, poor navigational tools and medicine that barely worked. This evidence cannot be rubbed
away by magically attributing scientific merit to random Greeks from
antiquity, by citing secondary literary sources. I will quote from the book
“Upright thinkers” by MIT physicist Leonard Mlodinow, who says point-blank that
systematic scientific investigation and intellectual discourse never happened
in the Arab world, China or in India.

Thinkers who were critical of the
intellectual status quo and who attempted to develop and systematize the
intellectual tools necessary to push the life of the mind forward were strongly
discouraged, as was the use of data as a means of advancing knowledge.

This is ridiculous, considering all the
“data” and astronomical tables that Europe actually used to make their
calendars came from the Arab world and India. The best rebuttal is given by
Prof. C.K.Raju who traced out the gradual historical development of calculus in
India starting from Aryabhata and contrasted this with the dramatic appearance
in Europe.

In India, too, a Hindu establishment
focused on caste structure insisted on stability at the expense of intellectual
advance.

Actually, India never had heresy. Not
only were controversial issues discussed openly, but there is a well-documented
tradition of philosophical debate. Unlike other cultures, the various types of
personal bias are explicitly listed through the system of Purva Paksha. This enabled thinkers of competing schools to
admit that their authority on truth is only partial, and not complete without
the knowledge of other schools. There is no
comparable example to the trial of Socrates in India. The rishis of India
always stressed on personal experience of knowledge instead of adhering to the
letter of tradition. When we talk about social inequalities, how can we ignore slavery.
Greeks and Romans had atrocious slave societies which continued until the
modern times in European colonies. As attested by the Greeks, slavery was
altogether absent in India. In fact, the archeological evidence from India
shows it to be one of the most egalitarian societies in the world and
materially quite well-off, right until the Islamic invasion. This is not to say
that inequalities did not exist, but they have to be treated relatively with
other societies. In any case, this a lazy argument and does not suffice for a
wanton dismissal of India.

In contrast to Europe, the scientific
tradition in India is continuous and shows consistent material artifacts
throughout time. Indeed, the literary corpus of Indian manuscripts dwarfs
every other civilization, with hundreds of thousands of Sanskrit works still
lying untranslated. The scientific superiority of India was acknowledged by
every civilization, including by the Greeks. The Arabs, who studied knowledge
from all over the world, stated explicitly that Indians were the first race to
pursue science. But in today’s western controlled academia, Indian contributions
are acknowledged only grudgingly. Wikipedia, which admits citations only from
western sources, is a great example of this bias. When we look up the entry for
“thesaurus”, say, the first reference is to one Philos of Byblos. Does anybody have
a copy of this book ? Has this been ever seen by western scholarship except
through extrapolations from secondary sources ? Is there a living cultural
tradition of using this book ? None. This can be contrasted with the secondary
mention of the Sanskrit “Amarakosha”, which is a real book. It is far larger
and has been in continuous use till today. If the history of science
is a train, Indians are eligible to travel only in third class compartments. Greeks can travel for free. There
are many levels of control: western academic scholars and their “peer”-reviewed
journals, popular books and magazines written by western-certified academics,
online portals, and finally censorship on social
websites like Wikipedia or Facebook. It is a good exercise for the reader to check his / her favorite science website (Aeon, Nautilus, Conversation, Edge) on how much the sections on the history of science and philosophy has elements from India or China. This hardly reflects the actual numbers of scientists of Indian and Chinese origin, even those working in the west ! It is an open question how long this
academic cartel of western superiority can be maintained against the growing economic power of India and
China, as well as the relative egalitarian structure of online communication.

This systematic eclipsing of Indian
achievements gives a very distorted view of history, making these conclusions
useless. For example, the grand tome of Steven Pinker “Better angels of our
nature” on the history of violence in the world has scant data from India. It
is unforgivable because India had the longest historical record of civilization
as well as the largest human population in the world. The data from India is
also inconvenient to Pinker’s thesis, which argues that historically
violence has only fallen down in time. In fact, India had a very peaceful
civilization for thousands of years along the Indus and Saraswati valleys with
no warfare. A similar distortion occurs in the book “Guns, Germs and Steel” by
Jared Diamond due to the complete absence of India. Diamond argues that
state power from agricultural states has forcibly penetrated tribal peoples
living in the peripheries and forests. But this did not happen in India, where
the tribal languages and customs survived to the present day. Finally, I have
to mention the book “The information” by James Gleick which gives a broad
history of information theory and computer science, but completely overlooks
India. As I will demonstrate through this series of blogs, it is absurd to
overlook the country of Panini.

Sanskrit as a promoter of biodiversity:

Extent of the fertile cultivated lands around the Saraswati river in the Vedic period

For about ten thousand years, the Indian
subcontinent was not only the most populous area but also the most
technologically and economically advanced civilization in the world. But
despite this, this region preserved its biological diversity. The forests of
India housed vast numbers of tigers and other wild animals, whose numbers
started to decline only during the colonial era. The same is true for
linguistic and cultural diversity in human societies. One can contrast how
Irish and other Celtic languages got exterminated from the British isles to how
Dravidian and south east Asian languages thrived despite the dominance of
Sanskrit. India is the only civilization in the world where tribal languages
and customs are preserved, despite being in close contact with literate
societies. Apart from protecting economic and lifestyle niches, religious beliefs
and practices were also protected. Many external religions such as
Zoroastrianism, Judaism, Syriac Christianity, Bahai'ism have seeked and found
refuge in India. This case of India is all the more surprising when we note
that the aggressive European civilizations were but cousins to India, sharing a
common linguistic and mythological ancestry. So what did its cousins lack that
made India tolerant?

The answer may be in the computational
nature of the Sanskrit language and the sciences nourished by it. Taken
together, they are a means to amplifying the consciousness of a person, making
him aware of every single aspect of life and his conduct to it. This reinforcement of consciousness is the key
to avoiding environmental catastrophe in any age. Often, humans destroy living
ecosystems through sheer ignorance and not paying attention. Greed is a big
factor, but stupidity results in greater violence in the long term.

The languages and the belief systems that we think in are Prakrits - applicable to a specific place and context. A certain type of fish might survive in certain type of waters, but other fish may die. Such is the case with Prakrits, they cannot claim to be universal. Further, if they become polluted (becoming Apabhramsas), they cause suffering to the very creatures that used to live there earlier. The greatest cause of suffering is the ego nurtured by the polluted mind. For example, after they conquered Bengal, the British have systematically scorched the region with famine to break the morale of people. The Americans exterminated the bison so that they could starve the native Indian tribes that depended on it. It is hard to fathom the depravities of such egotism, which continues to cause ecological destruction today. Even if we were completely selfish people (which I believe is a mischaracterization of us humans), we should be aware of the pitfalls of short-term greed. There is an important lesson to be learned from human civilizations that survived for a long time without ecological collapse like in India (at least until today's age). The lesson to learn is the open computational grammar of Sanskrit, which makes it modifiable to suit to specific local contexts in space and time, such that the human mind pays attention to the changing constraints of nature. Like pure waters of an unpolluted river, they can be enjoyed by all living beings. In a more general sense, we can say the same for open-source software if it achieves political and economic awareness amongst people.

When we compare the Indus-Saraswati
valleys with other ancient civilizations like Mesopotamia and Egypt, the first
thing that pops out is the sheer difference in size. North-western India was
the largest alluvial plain to have been cultivated by early humans and this was
nourished by the gigantic melting glaciers of the Himalayas post the ice-age.
This was the most fertile territory for settlement of humans, as it had every
single mineral and ecological resource. Because of the sheer size of this area,
the rest of the world experienced a huge cultural and genetic influx from here. In contrast, there is little evidence for inflow of people into India until 2000 years ago. There is no
genetic, archeological or literary evidence for an invasion/migration of Aryans
into India. Hitler was a complete idiot and so was Hegel. Modern racists are
equally stupid, despite being awful people. The case should have been closed,
but a problem still remains: why are European languages similar to Sanskrit if they
were not both sired by the same rampaging invaders? Considering the very ancient dates for agriculture and civilization in
India, an enormous amount of vocabulary might have been borrowed from India along with the spread of
agriculture. Words for numbers, agricultural tools and settled
village life could have been borrowed from Indian practices. Even genetic
evidence shows a significant migration from India and central Asia towards
Europe. These cultures could have evolved into distinct new languages over
thousands of years. Even the ancient European mythologies are a partial
reflection of the more extensive Indian works. Using the relatively simplistic tree model for language evolution, the Greek Indologist Nicholas Kazanas argues that European ancestors speaking Indo-European languages spread from the Saraswati valley through a northern route, with a stop-over in the Amu Darya basin and further into Russia. There is genetic evidence that Europeans evolved the ability to digest milk protein in this region, which probably gave these tribes an advantage over previous settlers in Europe (along with agricultural knowledge). More broadly, the science of historical linguistics will need to evolve better models for linguistic
evolution than simple hierarchical specialization from a common tree. How languages
evolve may be far more complex, where technical words and
phrases spread like in fluid dynamics.

India may have been the ancestral home for European tribes, but this agricultural civilization
did not spread along with a simultaneous awareness of ecological consciousness
and respect for nature. This can be contrasted with the parallel spread of civilization towards the south of India. Unlike the frigid north (just recovering from the ice-age), South India was already in a more advanced settlement phase: so these languages
did not borrow vocabulary for numbers and settled village life as in Europe. However, the scientific and
cultural influence of Sanskrit is tremendous in all Indian languages. For
example, Telugu shares 90% of its vocabulary with Sanskrit, despite being a
Dravidian language. Speaking Telugu provides a significant advantage in learning Sanskrit, as I discovered, not just in vocabulary but in all aspects of grammar. So this arbitrary grouping of South Indian languages into a separate family (based on corrupt models of language evolution considering only simple words and verb inflection patterns, but not the language in its entirety) needs to be questioned. Unlike European languages, South Indian languages didn't borrow such simple word structures from the Saraswati valley because they already had a working vocabulary for them, but borrowed more technical words and computational grammars which are infinitely more enriching. In this regard, it is illuminating to compare with the Finno-Ugric languages in Europe which also borrowed certain terminology for agriculture (these words resemble ancient Indo-Iranian roots than the later Germanic languages, despite the geographic proximity). The final clinching evidence is that the names of all Indian rivers (including many in South India) can be traced to Sanskrit etymologically, but very few European rivers have Indo-European roots.

Throughout the cultural history of India, all
great poets and writers in regional languages studied Sanskrit and were equally
proficient in it. The power of Sanskrit in word formation and grammar has
penetrated all Indian languages. In fact, the first writers of any regional
language (Tamil, Telugu, Malayalam etc.) wrote a technical Paninian-style
grammar for their language before composing any literary work. This is because
they understood the importance of grammar in imparting consciousness to the
literary tradition. This is in stark contrast to European languages whose
grammars were woefully inadequate until Sanskrit was discovered in colonial times. The
imperfect alphabets, spelling, and word formation of European languages resist change to this day.

It is time to reclaim the word “Aryan” back into Sanskrit, where it has
a precise etymology. The root word refers to agriculture. Aryan simply meant a
noble person belonging to a settled agricultural civilization. “Aryavarta”
referred to the large arable land between the Indus and Gangetic plains that
was suitable for agriculture. The computer scientist Alan Kay mentioned that we
as technologists have not yet discovered a practice of “agriculture”: a stable,
settled community that respects nature and evolves a set of civilized norms. I think
this is exactly what is needed with computer science and AI: I term this “Arya Prajna” in Sanskrit – roughly
translated as civilized intelligence or Aryan
Intelligence for AI. Idiots and Nazis may be damned – they do not control
how I speak words of my own heritage. I can as well call it Indian Intelligence
or Hindu Intelligence, but that will do disservice to the many tribal communities
who still live with their traditional nomadic lifestyles, and who are equally
part of Indian / Hindu fabric. The Aryan ethic is a subset of Indian
culture, but it was successfully exported as a universal value system, both to
the west and to the east. I don't mind other people using this word, as long as they use it in the right context and meaning. In this regard, it is important to note that Buddha
called himself as adhering to the Arya
Dharma. In my opinion, the best examples of the Aryan ethic in today’s
world are actually people who still live in the erstwhile plains of Saraswati
river – now turned into the Thar desert.These are Bishnois, who are a
vegetarian community living sustainably and who are passionate protectors of
wildlife in the region. These people are my inspiration in how we should use
technology to live intelligently and consciously. This comes only through
understanding nature’s rhythm (Rta) and the mutual interrelationships between
all objects (Indrajala) including one’s own mind. This is known as Rtambara Prajna in Patanjali’s Yoga Sutra. We can equivalently call it Arya Prajna.

Sanskrit categories of knowledge:

In an ancient time, the sage Vyasa
organized the Indian knowledge corpus into the Vedas (Veda literally means
knowledge, and Vyasa literally means compiler). Many people believe that Vyasa
is a common moniker used by an entire group of scientists and poets who
compiled these texts. These texts are broadly divided into the internal
spiritual sciences and external objective sciences. Unlike in the western and
Abrahamic faiths, it is the external sciences that are used as entry point for
the inner sciences, which are always shaped in their image. Thus in the Indian
tradition, seeking the inner spiritual truth is a series of recursive steps of
understanding the external world and creating a subtler internal universe in
that image. The inner sciences are dealt by the Vedas, which are four in
number. Each of them is paired with an outer science, these four are known as
the Upavedas. This is the grouping I will adopt in my series of blogs. The
pairs are as follows.

In this series of blogs, I will deal with
them in the order 4-3-1-2. In each blog, I will try to provide a computational
perspective on these subjects, grounded in a historical narrative from India. I
will try to raise some new questions, as well as introduce certain Sanskrit
words that encode unique perspectives to think about the existing issues.

I will connect language
with physics, and argue how grammar is a better model for doing physics than
the Newtonian analogy of "law". This will require building a complete
framework for computational science through Vedangas, which I explain
below.On ethics, I will describe the
limitations of language and logic in expressing ethical dilemmas and how that
relates to economics. In modern times, these dilemmas relate to the ethics of
AI in autonomous cars, finance and robotics, as well as technological
unemployment. I will substantiate this with discussion from the Indian
Dharmashastras, epics and the Artha Shastra of Chanakya. On health, I will argue about
how we need to understand the human body as a holistic ecological system and
vice-versa. I will discuss the holistic theory of healing in Ayurveda that
combines pharmacology with ritual, arts and mental discipline. I will connect this
with related evidence in neuroplasticity, gut bacteria,
endocrinology, psychology and the broader ecological health in the environment. On art, I will argue how
creativity is connected to gender and sexuality, using the theory of Samkhya. I will describe the principles of the ancient text of Natyashastra, as well as the
computational arts of Avadhanam and the 64 kalas traditionally practiced in India. I will try to provide certain directions on how to
extend these art-forms through AI, virtual reality and cybernetic systems. These
connections may look weird to a novice, so far greater elaboration is needed.
But I believe these are essential issues which cannot be overstepped while
thinking about AI.

On the first topic of the science of
engineering, we need to understand the central role of computation in all
engineering sciences today. In the Indian tradition, the Vedas are supported by
six fields of supporting study – known as the Vedangas (limbs of the Vedas).
These are the external body to the internal spirit of the Veda, echoing the
Indian practice of equating the internal world with the external world. As the
external world is easier to study and analyze, the Vedangas are studied
rigorously by the students before the Vedas. I describe them in the following.
Each of them merits a separate blog with references, on how traditional Indian
knowledge can be used to interpret computational sciences.

1.Shiksha (literally “instruction”): I translate this into today’s
language as user-interface design. Usually,
this is translated as phonetics, as the original texts mostly dealt with
accurate pronunciation. However, this is misleading because phonetics and
alphabet are far more precise in India than in Europe or in the middle-east. Further,
Shiksha also dealt with hand mudras that encode alphabets. The very word
Shiksha (instruction) refers to the fact that user-interface design is not
merely about providing the alphabet of interaction, but actually about
instructing the users on how to achieve proficiency with this alphabet.Traditionally,
Shiksha is visualized as the nose of the Veda (knowledge).

2.Chandas (literally “structure”): I translate this into today’s
language as combinatorics and theory of rhythm.
This is because this is precisely what this field describes. Pingala, who wrote
one of the earliest texts on Chandas described binomial theorem, Fibonacci
series and other combinatoric devices. Usually, Chandas is translated as
“prosody”. This is misleading because Sanskrit prosody is far more extensive
than the meters in other languages. What Sanskrit prosody analyzes is
the systematic division of time, which ultimately leads to how music can be
composed. This musical rhythm controls the movements of a person and sets them
to the right tempo, in order to perform any action. In this regard, this is a central element of sensory-motor loops in robotics, which can benefit from this inspiration. Traditionally, Chandas is visualized as the feet of the
Veda.

3.Vyakarana (literally “grammar”): I translate this
into today’s language as programming
language theory. This is because Paninian grammar is very different from
how “grammars” of other languages are treated. It is in fact equivalent to the
Backus-Naur Form in which programming languages are written. It also contains a
huge ontology of semantic concepts, that is especially relevant for AI programming.
Traditionally, Vyakarana is visualized as the mouth of the Veda.

4.Nirukta (literally “etymology”): I translate this
into today’s language as semantics.
This is because Sanskrit tradition has an extensive theory known as “sphota” on how meaning can be derived
from etymology. It needs to be always used in conjunction with Vyakarana.
Traditionally, Nirukta is visualized as the ears of the Veda.

5.Kalpa (literally “making”): I translate this into today’s language
as geometry. This is because
geometric context is the essential framework in which a ritual is formulated.
The texts of Kalpa deal with rituals pertaining to specific situations. Any
type of abstract ritual context can be encoded into a geometric context. Further, the
texts ofkalpa contain “sulba-sutras”
(literally “string-rules”) that expose the earliest known geometric constructions and proofs, along with the so called Pythagoras theorem (should be rightfully called the Sulba theorem). Traditionally, Kalpa is visualized as
the hands of the Veda.

6.Jyotisha (literally “seeing”): I translate this
into today’s language as harmonic and
data analysis. This is because time-keeping is the essential ingredient in
seeing things in the external world. The texts of Jyotisha described observing
astronomical events and precisely calculating time. They produced sophisticated
works of trigonometry and calculus, that form the basis for the modern
mathematical theory of analysis. However, the philosophy of Aryabhata and other
scientists of Jyotisha is very different from axiomatic mathematicians working
on analysis. It is more in line with modern techniques of data-interpretation
(observing the external world). So this is where this inspiration needs to be
deployed. Jyotisha has often been misused to make "predictions of the future", just like how data analysis is being misused today. Traditionally, Jyotisha is visualized as the eyes of the Veda.

In the upcoming blogs, I will try to
summarize the Indian contributions towards each of these fields to build a
holistic framework for computational sciences. I will try to build certain
perspectives on how these inspirations can be deployed today for solving open
problems and for looking ahead. These issues need to be thought through again
and again, by scores of people, so that a coherent Indian perspective can be
built about AI. At present, Indian scientists rarely use Indian categories and
terminology. One significant disadvantage is the lack of Indian language
translations for cutting edge scientific topics. In this regard, a stark
contrast can be observed with Chinese, Japanese and various European scientific
communities.This needs to change.

I will give a few examples to indicate
the kind of perspective I would like to build. In Sanskrit, Mantra and yantra signify
a cybernetic environment for the user and can be used as new models for
software and hardware respectively. The etymology of these words and their
existing associations with Indian psychology may create a new humanistic focus
on computing, where the effect of software on user's mental state is placed central to its evaluation. From the Indian perspective, the physical analogy for an
algorithm is not a mechanical clock, but a constantly flowing river that
nourishes people. This river is Saraswati on the banks of which Indian civilization
flourished, and who was later glorified as the goddess of speech. In the Indian tradition, this river is supposed to flow through all
the other rivers, blending at sacred spots of confluence. When Indians make
pilgrimages, they carry small pots ofwater
from the rivers of their places of origin to the sacred Ganges and mix them in.
This is a way of acknowledging the commonality of all the rivers. Interpreting
this tradition with computers and algorithms, we should encourage
interoperability of all computing systems, by periodically blending in the
waters of computation with each other. This is necessary to prevent the chaos
of codecs, ports and standards that we experience today. This is a gentler method of ensuring interoperability than setting the agenda from the top down. Thinking
of algorithms and computer programs as rivers also requires us to
maintain them free of pollution. Various types of pollution in terms of data-structures, security, network infrastructure
etc. need to be addressed in a similar manner to how we address pollution in ecology. I will discuss these aspects in conjunction with Ayurveda.

Learning
Sanskrit for Poetry and Spirituality:

My blog will
definitely annoy many people, to whom there needs to be no better reason to
learn Sanskrit than to read the Upanishads or to enjoy the poetry of Kalidas. Indeed,
sublime works of Sanskrit such as Abhijnana
Shakuntalam had a huge influence in the European renaissance, influencing
the likes of Goethe and Coleridge. In a public discourse, Shatavadhani Ganesh once chided people championing scientific applications of Sanskrit as
idiots who miss the true beauty of this language. Point taken. Personally, I do agree that
these poetic works are the highest treasure of Sanskrit, but this will always be a
subjective personal judgement. These works of poetry and spirituality are
complementary to scientific practice, in how we analyze the external world. My
argument is that our modern tools for science are imperfect and need to be re-hauled through Sanskrit. The modern methods of academic instruction,
mathematics and science have been disconnected from the actual historical
heritage in Sanskrit works. This disconnect has produced so much pollution and
strife in this world that people cannot even find their inner world of
poetry any more.In Sanskrit tradition, the contrast
could not have been stronger. Great mathematicians like Bhaskara were also
highly skilled poets. All the great Sanskrit poets and musicians used
computational thinking that would pride a scientist. These bridges have to be
rebuilt today, not only for the sake of lovers of Sanskrit, but for the whole
world. The mainstream narrative from western media is okay with letting Indians have their naked mystics, but not as open about acknowledging the full extent of scientific contributions. So mysticism and poetry are not my bone of contention. But anybody who tries to confine the applicability of Sanskrit to just within these realms is an enemy, not of Sanskrit, but of science.

What to do next ?

I have a
tough problem writing these blogs and I need help from the readers. Firstly, if you like my blog, please copy it and annotate it with your own impressions and ideas. You may use everything written in my blogs with
the most liberal creative commons license. If you are an editor, please edit my arguments and cite them with references, wherever needed. You can cut specific portions of the text and distribute it to a certain audience who may not be interested in the other aspects. At this stage, I need to sharpen my ideas through discussion and criticism. If you have money, please support my research :) If you are from CDAC or other such scientific institute working on Sanskrit, please be aware that digitizing old Sanskrit texts or art-forms is not the only goal within your mandate. It is high time that a brand new vision for computation and human interfaces is built from Sanskrit. If you are the Indian government, please evolve a funding scheme that adequately supports scientists working in these fields. You have no more excuses for lack of monies. An ecosystem of funding and support is needed not only for scientific literature, but also for technical development of computational systems based on these ideas. It is better to have many sources of funding, such that they cannot be controlled by vested interests in the establishment. I think a blog is neither the right encoding (a book may be better, I might write one when my ideas become more mature) nor the right method of communicating to the public (who have short attention spans, but I don't care about the average reader). The right method of creating online literature has not been developed yet. Ted Nelson had several great ideas in his Xanadu system, but even he is unaware of the Sanskrit tradition of etymology, sutras and bhashyas (no fault of his). A new world of computational literature will be built in my own life-time: I would like to shape it with inspiration from the Sanskrit tradition. After all, the future is not settled yet.

I will try the age-old
Indian trick of using stories and mythologies to get my point across. In essence,
our situation today is similar to the Kishkindakanda
in Ramayana, where Rama requests the help of Sugriva to find his lost Sita
(Indian scientific inspiration). Sita is kidnapped by Ravana and imprisoned in an ivory
tower in Lanka (western academia) and we need to build a bridge to get there.
My job here is to be like Angada - the son of Vali, convincing the king Sugriva that he should
keep his promise to Rama. I should have no ego. I should let go of the fact that my own father Vali has
been killed by Rama, as this is done for the cause of Dharma. For me personally, Vali is the altar of European "enlightenment", of which I am definitely a product. But how can Vaali equally not be my own personal Indian heritage ? Actually, I cannot be sure. So I have to keep evaluating the relevance of Sanskrit in a dispassionate manner: on issues such as technical transparency, biodiversity and so on. Only this context determines who is Rama and who are Sugriva and Vali. The cause of the Indian claim for scientific heritage is important, but cannot be the sole arbiter of my work here. This is also why I ignore the aspect of poetic beauty and spirituality in the relevance of Sanskrit for computation.These are subjective values and prone to misinterpretation. After the Vanara army is ready, I have to show where to
ocean is shallow and how to build a bridge to Lanka. But I need help from
everybody to pick up their stones and lay them down. When the time comes, I
should be ready to serve as a messenger to the court of Ravana. When I place
my foot down on a topic, no Rakshasa should be able to lift it up. This is hard
work and I am not sure if I am monkey enough to be up for it (please excuse my
pun from the Ramayana). There are many others like me, and most of them are not
even Indian. But learning Sanskrit for the purpose of redeeming science can be
as joyful an endeavor as living the Ramayana in our own lives. In this sense,
there is a Rasa to this drama and it
is not mere mechanics.

References:

If you actually got until here, it means you have patience for more reading. There are many references to be added here and this section will (may) be updated later. I will give specific references in the upcoming blogs when I discuss individual topics in greater detail.

[28] CK Raju's interviews with Claude Alvares where he argues that the paradigm shift theory of Kuhn is a lie. He also gives a broad historiography for scientific discoveries in India as well as in the Arab world.He serially debunks the myth of Copernicus, Euclid and Claudius Ptolemy. In my opinion, the myth of Claudius Ptolemy is the most important one to debunk (and it is also the easiest, as it rests on ridiculously flimsy grounds). [29] Here is an informal blog that recounts various instances of how Indian Ganita is digested into western mathematics. This summarizes CK Raju's scholarly work along with examples and illustrations from other writers. [30] Sankrant Sanu is an activist for the cause of using Indian languages in higher education and computing: His book Bhasha Neeti has a nice web portal. [31] There is an ecosystem of web portals explaining Indian culture, philosophy and customs from the insider perspective: Prekshaa, Pragyata, IndicPortal, IndiaFacts, CreativeIndiaMag and so on. They are very good and not at all jingoistic, as how the mainstream media portrays them to be. (You might run into hotheads and idiots on social media though). Just like any other web-based education / journalism organization, it is unclear how these endeavors make any profit. As profits get depleted from journalism, the only journalism that will survive is a fake one, with support from the (financial) establishment. The same can be said about education. This will have a deleterious effect on our democracy. The business model for web education and journalism needs to be redefined and Indian culture may provide psychological insights on how to do this (I will write more about this when I write on the Artha Veda). [32] Loads of references about AI, technological unemployment, ethics in AI, autonomous cars, how data-driven learning messes up algorighmic convergence.. are you kidding me ? Use google man. Or get a PhD. Or check out the Ethical Machines podcast. Or theFATML conference. One of the organizers is an expert Sambhar cook. Check out his geomblog.